Mandatory Palestine in the context of "Palestinian identity"

Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in the Southern Levant region of West Asia. It borders Lebanon to the north, Syria to the northeast, Jordan to the east and Egypt to the southwest. Israel occupies the Palestinian territories of the West Bank in the east and the Gaza Strip in the southwest, as well as the Syrian Golan Heights in the northeast. Israel's western coast lies on the Mediterranean Sea, the southern tip reaches the Red Sea, and the east includes the Earth's lowest point near the Dead Sea. Jerusalem is the government seat and proclaimed capital, while Tel Aviv is Israel's largest urban area and economic centre.

The Land of Israel is synonymous with Palestine or the Holy Land. In antiquity it was home to the Canaanites and later the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Its location at a continental crossroads brought demographic shifts under various empires. Nineteenth-century European antisemitism fuelled the Zionist movement for a Jewish homeland. Britain endorsed this goal in the 1917 Balfour Declaration and ruled Mandatory Palestine from 1920. Jewish immigration and British policies intensified Arab-Jewish tensions, and the 1947 United Nations (UN) Partition Plan led to a civil war.

Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. It encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip, collectively known as the Palestinian territories. The territories share the vast majority of their borders with Israel, with the West Bank bordering Jordan to the east and the Gaza Strip bordering Egypt to the southwest. It has a total land area of 6,020 square kilometres (2,320 sq mi) while its population exceeds five million. Its proclaimed capital is Jerusalem, while Ramallah serves as its de facto administrative center. Gaza was its largest city prior to evacuations in 2023.

Situated at a continental crossroad, the Palestine region was ruled by various empires and experienced various demographic changes from antiquity to the modern era. It was treading ground for the Nile and Mesopotamian armies and merchants from North Africa, China and India. The region has religious significance. The ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict dates back to the rise of the Zionist movement, supported by the United Kingdom during World War I. The war saw Britain occupying Palestine from the Ottoman Empire, where it set up Mandatory Palestine under the auspices of the League of Nations. Increased Jewish immigration led to intercommunal conflict between Jews and Palestinian Arabs, which escalated into a civil war in 1947 after a proposed partitioning by the United Nations was rejected by the Palestinians and other Arab nations.

The population of the region of Palestine, which approximately corresponds to modern Israel and the Palestine, has varied in both size and ethnic composition throughout the history of Palestine.

Studies of Palestine's demographic changes over the millennia have shown that a Jewish majority in the first century AD had changed to a Christian majority by the 3rd century AD, and later to a Muslim majority, which is thought to have existed in Mandatory Palestine (1920-1948) since at least the 12th century AD, during which the total shift to Arabic language was completed.

The Jewish aspiration to return to Zion, generally associated with divine redemption, has suffused Jewish religious thought since the destruction of the First Temple and the Babylonian exile.

Aliyah (US: /ˌæliˈɑː/, UK: /ˌɑː-/; Hebrew: עֲלִיָּה, romanized: ălīyyā, lit. 'ascent') is the immigration of Jews from the diaspora to, historically, the geographical Land of Israel or the Palestine region, where in the 20th century the State of Israel was established. Traditionally described as "the act of going up" (towards the Jewish holy city of Jerusalem), moving to the Land of Israel or "making aliyah" is one of the most basic tenets of Zionism. The opposite action – emigration by Jews from the Land of Israel – is referred to in the Hebrew language as yerida (lit. 'descent'). The Law of Return that was passed by the Israeli parliament in 1950 gives all diaspora Jews, as well as their children and grandchildren, the right to relocate to Israel and acquire Israeli citizenship on the basis of connecting to their Jewish identity.

For much of their history, most Jews have lived in the diaspora outside of the Land of Israel due to various historical conflicts that led to their persecution alongside multiple instances of expulsions and exoduses. In the late 19th century, 99.7% of the world's Jews lived outside the region, with Jews representing 2–5% of the population of the Palestine region. Despite its historical value as a national aspiration for the Jewish people, aliyah was acted upon by few prior to the rise of a national awakening among Jews worldwide and the subsequent development of the Zionist movement in the late 19th century; the large-scale immigration of Jews to Palestine had consequently begun by 1882. Since the Israeli Declaration of Independence in 1948, more than 3 million Jews have made aliyah. As of 2014, Israel and the Israeli-occupied territories contain approximately 42.9 percent of the world's Jewish population.

The United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine was a proposal by the United Nations to partition Mandatory Palestine at the end of the British Mandate. Drafted by the UN Special Committee on Palestine (UNSCOP) on 3 September 1947, the Plan was adopted by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947 as Resolution 181 (II). The resolution recommended the creation of independent but economically linked Arab and Jewish States and an extraterritorial "Special International Regime" for the city of Jerusalem and its surroundings.

The Partition Plan, a four-part document attached to the resolution, provided for the termination of the Mandate; the gradual withdrawal of British armed forces by no later than 1 August 1948; and the delineation of boundaries between the two States and Jerusalem at least two months after the withdrawal, but no later than 1 October 1948. The Arab state was to have a territory of 11,592 square kilometres, or 42.88 percent of the Mandate's territory, and the Jewish state a territory of 15,264 square kilometres, or 56.47 percent; the remaining 0.65 percent or 176 square kilometres—comprising Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the adjoining area—would become an international zone. The Plan also called for an economic union between the proposed states and for the protection of religious and minority rights.

The partition of the Ottoman Empire (30 October 1918 – 1 November 1922) was a geopolitical event that occurred after World War I and the occupation of Constantinople by British, French, and Italian troops in November 1918. The partitioning was planned in several agreements made by the Allied Powers early in the course of World War I, notably the Sykes–Picot Agreement, after the Ottoman Empire had joined Germany to form the Ottoman–German alliance. The huge conglomeration of territories and peoples that formerly comprised the Ottoman Empire was divided into several new states. The Ottoman Empire had been the leading Islamic state in geopolitical, cultural, and ideological terms. The partitioning of the Ottoman Empire after the war led to the domination of the Middle East by Western powers such as Britain and France, and saw the creation of the modern Arab world and the Republic of Turkey. Resistance to the influence of these powers came from the Turkish National Movement but did not become widespread in the other post-Ottoman states until the period of rapid decolonization after World War II.

The League of Nations mandate granted the French Mandate for Syria and the Lebanon, the British Mandate for Mesopotamia (later Iraq) and the British Mandate for Palestine, later divided into Mandatory Palestine and the Emirate of Transjordan (1921–1946). The Ottoman Empire's possessions in the Arabian Peninsula became the Kingdom of Hejaz, which the Sultanate of Nejd (today Saudi Arabia) was allowed to annex, and the Mutawakkilite Kingdom of Yemen. The Empire's possessions on the western shores of the Persian Gulf were variously annexed by Saudi Arabia (al-Ahsa and Qatif), or remained British protectorates (Kuwait, Bahrain, and Qatar) and became the Arab States of the Persian Gulf.